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Nov 1, 2013

Writer Ramblings: What I Look For in a Villain

Gollum art by TL Jeffcoat

When I write an antagonist I like
to dig deep into their inner workings. I want the reader to sympathize and
loathe them all at the same time. Some villains I’ve created are just people in
bad situations, doing bad things. Some look for the bad things to do out of
boredom or compensation for an inferiority complex. And then there comes the
truly evil villain. Whether he’s a pathetic envious creature that wants to
reach some higher plane of existence, or bring the world down to his level. For
me, every antagonist must have a human element to him. There must be some
purpose to his questionable behavior that I could understand why he does what
he does, even if I feel it’s the wrong approach. The worst written villains are
the ones that are evil because they just are. They were born that way or
created that way. Sometimes we just don’t know what drives the villain in the
story, but the writer must have had a reason for the bad guy to be the bad guy.

Even the Bible’s antagonist, Satan,
has a relatable story as to why he’s evil. He is jealous of the human race
because God placed Adam and Eve above the angels and the angels are to protect
and watch over us. Satan felt the angels were slighted because they are far more
powerful than us and therefore we should serve them. Arrogance, envy, and greed
are three human characteristics that drove the leader of the Angels into a
revolt and branded him as evil.

Let’s look at “Lord of the Rings.”
Sauron and the Nazgul are the obvious antagonists in the story, but we see the
world through the eyes of innocent and naive hobbits. They don’t really
understand why Sauron is bad and wants to rule the world. They only know that
if he succeeds, the lifestyle of their people will be forever ruined. They
would become slaves or be exterminated. Tolkien knew what made Sauron tick, he
wrote about it in other books, like the Silmarillion. So Tolkien added another
antagonist, Sméagol.

Sméagol was creepy, he was driven
by the same evil as Sauron, but he wasn’t just some power hungry warlord. He
just wanted to be left alone with his precious. We saw in “The Hobbit” how
Bilbo disturbed his peace and quiet and forced him to venture back out into the
nasty world to find his precious. In “Lord of the Rings” we saw how this
pitiful creature was just like us in many ways. He coveted that one thing he
felt made his life perfect, even if it wasn’t good for him. He was willing to
do just about anything to get it.

Some of us become obsessive about
something in our life that might not be good for us, but we can’t help
ourselves. Sméagol was afraid, he was angry, and he was treacherous. He had
many qualities that some of us have when we are at our darkest times. If you
haven’t had a dark time in your life then you are a very lucky person, and I
hope you never have to experience a dark moment. The odds are though, you will
eventually.

We don’t always need to know all
the details of how the antagonist became the antagonist. Take Darth Vader as an
example. He was considered one of the biggest bad guys ever after the Star Wars
movies from the 70’s and 80’s. In the end we discovered he was still human and
he loved his son. That made him human. Some might even have felt sorry for him
in the end. He took a wrong turn in life and he became evil. Then the 90’s
came, and we got three more movies that told how Darth Vader came to be. Now we
understand that he was nothing but an arrogant, selfish, whiny kid who threw
temper tantrums when he didn’t get his way. Although making Darth Vader even
more human, at least for me, it destroyed my vision of him as one of the
greatest villains ever. Now he’s just a powerful idiot who was led around by
his nose and refused to listen to wisdom. He’s a bad guy because only heard
what he wanted to hear and not the truth. Some would say that makes him more
human, but now he’s not really much of a villain as much as he is now is closer
to becoming a protagonist throughout the entire Star Wars saga. This may have
been Lucas’s plan all along. I would have preferred that Anakin’s history have
remained more as rumor and speculation than finding out he was just a typical
kid.

On the other hand, Tolkien never
explained why Sauron was evil. Why did he want to rule the world? He was a
terrible military strategist and warrior. That scene in the beginning of
Fellowship of the Ring wasn’t the only time he had been beaten one on one by a
mere mortal. The world had mostly fallen apart already with just his partial
presence leaning on it. He wasn’t always the Burning Eye bent on enslaving
every nation. He once was just a shape-shifting being that excelled in
architecture and metallurgy serving his Gods and masters. Tolkien doesn’t
reveal that very much in Lord of the Rings, or in the Silmarillian. He’s made
him a faceless enemy, ominous and frightening, with no real explanation on why
he followed Morgoth down a dark path and after Morgoth fell, he picked where
his master left off. His Nazgul represent him and they too are mysterious and
scary. It worked wonderfully in Tolkien’s world because we knew the evil wasn’t
invincible, but standing face to face with it would be too dangerous.

What kind of villain scares you the
most? Or what kind do you enjoy reading the most? Have you ever related to a
villain you were reading? If so who is it?

Disclaimer

All photographs and artwork on this blog are owned by TL Jeffcoat or Steven DeVon Jones, the only exceptions being the background, book covers or movie posters linked from Photobucket, and the photos used from the WANACommons or Wikipedia which are all labeled as such. If you would like to use any of the artwork, please let TL Jeffcoat know and he will more than likely oblige.

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